In a thicket sprinkled with morning, where each leaf

Burned green, hot as a newly minted coin. . . .

Peter Davison, The Breaking of the Day

If it was a dark night on the way back from Hebrew class, the Kaiser might be lurking around a corner in his spiked helmet waiting to pounce on you. Bright moonlight could be even worse. This was the kind of night, they said, on which a Zeppelin could come. We had never had one yet, in our little seaside town on the northeast coast of England, but we had heard what they had done to London. The Kaiser was bad enough, but he was, after all, human. The Zeppelin was something in the sky—like God. If it suddenly appeared, there could be no escape. It would be like one of those terrible punishments in the Bible that God was always threatening if the children of Israel were sinful. I knew so many of these verses by heart, translating a chapter or two of the Bible to my father at night, after supper. If we were wicked enough, the way the children of Israel were always wicked and rebellious in the Wilderness, this was the way God’s voice would be heard: a German Zeppelin would float into the sky, some tremendous thunder and lightning would strike from it, and we would perish.

There were so many sins that could bring this about. We might eat pork; we might mix up meat and milk dishes; worst of all, we might break one of the laws of the Sabbath. Of course we would never do this deliberately: we would be fully on guard against sins as obvious as striking a match on the Sabbath or carrying something through the streets. But we might commit a Sabbath sin accidentally, which could bring the same punishment. We might tear a piece of paper while turning the pages of a book; more terrible still, it might be a holy book, something with Hebrew writing on it. There were even worse accidents possible—things almost too terrible to think of. Suppose my father, holding up the Scroll of the Law after the reading in synagogue, let it fall. One could hear God’s voice thundering: “Because ye have defiled My sanctuary and destroyed My Holy Name. . . .” And in the same second one could hear the clap of thunder and see the walls of our little synagogue crumbling into dust.

It seemed unreal at home, with Father listening to my translation approvingly, stroking his beautiful George V beard. In the background, my brothers and sisters would be busy with their quarreling and homework, while Mother bustled with the clearing up after supper. Home was safe; and even synagogue, where the awful warnings and curses were solemnly chanted, was normally a cheerful place, full of chatter and argument. It was only at night, and out alone, that terror sometimes came to the surface.

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Apart from the Kaiser and the Zeppelin, everything else about the war was sheer delight. Each day brought excitement and adventure. I had never known any existence without the war, but I realized even then that it was the war I had to thank for so much of the fun of my life.

Most wonderful of all was half-day school. Two schools had amalgamated, because of the shortage of teachers. My group went only in the mornings, which left us free every afternoon without teachers, parents, Hebrew school, or anything. Every day found us after dinner on the sand dunes, or climbing the cliffs. It wasn’t just that we were free and happy; the war itself gave us endless games. The steep roads down to the beaches were barricaded with barbed-wire entanglements, to prevent a landing. There were huts and fences, and all kinds of useful material—barrels, tentpoles, corrugated sheets, tarpaulins. There were trenches and piles of sandbags, with anti-aircraft guns in their emplacements. Sometimes soldiers would be training on the beach; at other times we would stand by watching the Coast Guard at work; but mostly we would be on our own, using anything we liked for our games. The long stone pier at the end of the harbor had been shut to civilians, but for us there were ways of climbing through or over the barriers, so that the enemy and the defenders could take up their positions, fighting battles that might last a whole afternoon, until a guard or a policeman would suddenly appear to send us all to flight.

Once, some of us actually climbed from the pier onto a minesweeper that was moored there. Willie Fisher hid in one of the lifeboats and said he was going to stay there until the ship sailed. He climbed out quickly enough when we heard the sailors coming, but I believed for a moment that he might really have stowed away. For Willie, my best friend, was always doing really brave things—as when we fought the gypsy boys. The gypsies had an encampment in the fields behind the beach. We were frightened of the gypsies, but sometimes hid in the cornfields nearby to spy on them. One could watch them for hours, with their dark faces and bright red shirts and scarves, moving around quietly—secretly—in front of their caravan, their horses cropping quietly at one side, while at the open fire a young woman—strangely like my oldest sister—cooked their dinner. But what went on inside the caravan? That was the great mystery. I crawled nearer one day and was suddenly attacked by three young gypsy boys who began beating me on the head and back with sticks. I crouched on the ground, my head in my arms, the blows falling, when all at once there was a shout and Willie was there, pulling, punching. I was on my feet, and in a minute we were away and safe.

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Willie and I sat together in the same double-desk at school. He was tall for his age, and fair. I was shortish, dark, and—as I know now from old photographs—with large brown eyes. We were a good pair at school because Willie was very poor at schoolwork—bored with every minute of it—while I could help him. I found everything easy and was Miss Freeman’s favorite. Miss Freeman, our teacher, was in my eyes dazzlingly beautiful. She was rather plump with a creamy skin. She had large coils of hair piled on her head, and always wore a white blouse and dark skirt. When she stopped behind us at our desk to look at what we were writing, she would sigh at Willie’s work and then, looking at mine, would run her hand softly through my hair. I could always feel her leaning on me from behind. It was a nice feeling. No one ever touched me in this pleasant way at home. We never kissed there, as I saw other parents and children doing. My mother was far too busy with her seven children and with the visitors who were always dropping in for tea or meals. Home, though it was safe, was also a battleground. We watched each other with great care, jealous for the extras that might be secured—a book, a magazine, a second helping of tzimmes, a piece of cake. There were battles, alliances, triumphs, and defeats. But at school, with Miss Freeman smiling lazily at me, it was different. Once I stole a rose from our garden and gave it to her. She put it in a glass of water on her desk. It was our secret.

I never said much at home about what went on at school. No one would have cared. I was the fifth child of the seven; everything seemed to turn on what was happening to the others, especially my two big brothers. I listened avidly for what the older children said, and even more for what they didn’t say. All had their secret lives, and parts of them gradually emerged as I listened: amazing things, grown-up things. Most particularly I listened silently—fearfully, sometimes—to the angry talk between my father and my brothers. His face in anger frightened me. They were always doing the wrong things. It made me anxious to insure that my own guilty secrets didn’t come out.

One secret I was afraid to reveal was that my best friend at school was Willie Fisher. I had a good reason for keeping him away from our house, though sometimes I went to his. It was not just that he was non-Jewish; there was something far worse, making him supremely taboo: his father was a “pork butcher.” A pork butcher sold all forms of pig products, sausages, and black “blood” puddings. Like many pork butchers in England, Willie’s father was a German. His shop, just down the road from us, still had a sign on it with his name in the original spelling: Fischer: Pork Butcher. Willie told me that in 1914, at the outbreak of the war with Germany, the people of our town had smashed the Fisher shop windows and pelted the children with stones in the street. This kind of thing had happened all over England. Mr. Fisher had been interned; the family had had to go away, and had lived for a little while with an aunt in the country. Later in the war Mr. Fisher, with two sons now in the British Army, had been released from internment and had gone to work on a farm close by. His wife and Willie had gone back to live above the shop, whose windows were now boarded up. Mrs. Fisher was always nice to me when I went there, but at the back of my mind I felt guilty. The word “pork” on the sign outside seemed to be engraved in letters of fire.

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The friends whose existence could be admitted were, naturally, the children of the Jewish congregation which my father served as Cantor. My closest Jewish friend—partly because their house was very near—was Sammy Woolf, whose father, Joe Woolf, kept a pawnshop in the old part of town by the port.

The Woolfs were very different from us. For one thing, they were rich. They were so rich, in fact, that they had electric light, which you could turn on with a switch at the door. In our house, gas mantles had to be carefully lit with a match or a taper from the fire. And whereas my mother did all the cooking and baking and a million other things, helped only by my sisters and fat old Mrs. Moxon who came in for the rough cleaning, Mrs. Woolf had a real maid—a plump country girl called Elsie, who baked scones in the afternoon and took tea in to Mrs. Woolf on a tray. I haunted their kitchen, where Elsie stuffed me with scones and strawberry jam; there was always a delicious smell of flour and baking around her. Mrs. Woolf was friendly too, but rather stately. She was, after all, the wife of the president of the congregation; and Mr. Woolf was, in addition, a town councillor, so that non-Jews would sometimes visit their house for formal teas on Sunday afternoons. Sammy would be taken in to be shown off on these occasions, while I hung around happily in the kitchen with Elsie. But he was very offhand when I asked him about it. It never seemed to him at all odd that their house could at the same time be Jewish and yet open to non-Jewish visitations. To me, home was by definition a Jewish fortress. Non-Jewish people had no place there, any more than in synagogue.

But this was only part of the different life that the Woolfs led, and which made them so exciting. They had broken through all kinds of barriers. Their shop was kept open on shabbes; their children went to the pictures on shabbes (I never went at all); they had a maid; they had non-Jewish visitors; and they had electric light. The councillor himself looked like a typical north-country Englishman—stout, with ruddy cheeks and a big drooping black mustache. But in many ways he was still a traditional Jew from the old country. He had been a yeshivah bocher— a Talmud student—in early life. He loved sitting down with my father to go through a page of the Talmud, with the rabbinical commentaries, while they waited for a minyan (a quorum of ten) to begin prayers on shabbes afternoon. It never seemed odd that he had just walked across to the synagogue from his shop. For him, the breaking of the Sabbath was overlooked. He was so obviously a complete Jew that it didn’t matter.

I loved listening to the men talking in synagogue on shabbes afternoons while they waited for dusk and the ma’ariv service. If Councillor Woolf and my father were not running through a passage from the Midrash or the Talmud together, they would be joining in with the others in talk about the war, and most particularly about the fighting in Palestine. General Allenby’s campaign to win back the Holy Land from the pagans was a situation they were completely at home with. It had happened before with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then again with Joshua and King David. I knew the place-names myself from the weekly Bible readings, and listened eagerly. Sons of our congregation were actually in the British Army with Allenby, fighting like the old children of Israel. It was almost as if the Messiah were on his way. I can recall the style of conversation perfectly as Mr. Woolf and my father exchanged verses, with others joining in.

“It says in the Newcastle Chronicle that they’ve taken Beersheba.”

“I suppose they will still use the well that Isaac found there.”

My father would nod approvingly. “Rashi says that all those wells that Isaac’s servants dug before Beersheba—at Esek, and Sitnah, and Rehovot—were really places for study—‘wells of the Torah’—and that is why God appeared there to him and promised that his seed would inherit the land.”

“If you ask me,” Mr. Woolf says, “Rashi made up half his stories. How did he know?”

“How did he know?” says my father. “It’s in the Bible. Everything is in the Bible.”

“I had a letter today from my son,” one of the congregants says proudly. “He met some Jews who actually live in Palestine, at a place called Gihonah.”

“There you are,” my father says. “That must be Gihon, from the Book of Kings. And King David said: Mount my son Solomon on my own mule and take him down to Gihon.”

Mr. Woolf joins in: “And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there king over Israel.”

“What will happen when Allenby wins?” a congregant asks. “Perhaps a new Jewish king will be anointed in Gihon like King Solomon.”

“Will all the Jews go back to the Holy Land?” says another, “Next Year in Jerusalem?”

My father is doubtful. “We must wait for the Messiah,” he says, stroking his beard. “Then we go back.”

“I will go anyhow to see Jerusalem,” Mr. Woolf says firmly. “Ah, we have a minyan. What kept you so long, Goldberg? Let us say ma’ariv. I have to go back to the shop.”

I sit listening, open-mouthed. For the moment the Kaiser—and even the Zeppelin—had ceased to threaten.

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I rarely played with Sammy Woolf during the week because, being rich, he went to a smart fee-paying school. But he came to cheder (Hebrew school) three nights a week, which gave us a chance, if we walked home together, to talk about Dolly, his only sister—a “big girl,” already turned sixteen, very pretty, and, as everybody agreed, a real devil. Talking about Dolly was part of our endless conversation about girls and babies. We exchanged such information as we were gathering, while at the same time we speculated about what the older members of our family were up to, especially in this regard.

Our talk—in north-country (“Geordie”) singsong—was an attempt to outdo each other in revelations.

“Dolly and your brother Simon are sweethearts,” Sammy told me once.

“Go on!”

“Why aye! I saw them behind the Moor Rock last Wednesday afternoon.”

“Ye couldna have! I was playing near the rock with Willie Fisher and I didn’t see anything.”

“Well I did. I saw them both. They were kissing each other.”

“I though it was Dannie she was keen on.” Dannie was my other big brother.

“Oh, she was. But Dolly is always out with different boys. I saw her on the sands with Tommy Thompson’s big brother George.”

“Kissing him! He’s a goy!”

“Oh, Dolly’s terrible. My father beat her with a strap.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard her crying. She told me she’s going to run away to London.”

“Go on!”

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It was quite true that my big brothers Dannie and Simon were rivals. I could understand them quarreling over Dolly: they quarreled over everything. The whole family was very argumentative, but with Dannie and Simon the quarrels, and the raised voice of my father, went over into anger, black anger. It always sounded to me like the quarrels in the Bible—the rebellion of Korah, the anger of Moses, and the wrath of God. And if now Dolly had jilted Dannie, who was her own age, for Simon, just over a year older, it could be frightening. The quarrels always started this way. Simon would do something clever to get Dannie down. Dannie would respond with something wild. I always felt rivalry in the air with these two.

They never quarreled over me. I was their slave, but they did such wonderful things for me. Dannie would take me swimming and, by the force of his own example, would get me to plunge into the roaring waves from the beach, or dive in from the rocks. He was a most powerful swimmer, and absolutely fearless. Simon took me climbing for gulls’ eggs in the cliffs, and once he took me into the shipyard at Jarrow, nearby, where he had begun to work as an apprentice engineer. He showed me the skeleton of the ship, with the great plates laid; all around us were the myriad crane arms, the clanging of rivets, and the hoot of gray warships going up and down the river. I was almost too excited to sleep that night. And now Simon had got Dolly away from Dannie. He must have tricked her away somehow. It was like Jacob and Esau—or like Laban’s trick over Jacob with Rachel and Leah. Something terrible would happen. Dannie was wild.

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But it was Friday now, when one stopped worrying. Mother had been baking all Thursday as usual, and cooking all Friday. The huge pans and dishes were ready—fish (fresh from the sea that morning) for Friday night; cholent (a baked stew) to be kept warm for Saturday dinner after synagogue. The house was spotless. The men of the family—including me—were off to synagogue for the evening service. All except the baby would be sitting down for supper later, eight at table in all, unless Father also brought home a stranger from synagogue, as he often did.

Since a camp had been opened at Hartley Moor, a few miles away, there was almost always a Jewish soldier or two in synagogue on Friday evenings. When Father invited them, they accepted quickly, probably homesick for gefillte fish. To us it was like a raffle each week to see whom we would get. It was especially exciting when it was an officer, with his brown leather shoulder-straps crossing over to the belt which held his revolver.

On this particular Friday, we had been lucky in a way none of us could have expected. A soldier had come back with us and was sitting patiently through the preliminary blessings as if he were an ordinary Jew. He was an officer; his badges and leather straps shone in the candlelight. But he was no ordinary Jew; he had introduced himself in synagogue with a name that had dazzled us: Lieutenant Rothschild. A Rothschild! In our house! My father sang on: “Sholom aleichem malachei hashores. . . .” “ Peace unto you, ministering angels. . . .” We looked at the soldier and looked at each other excitedly. Lieutenant Rothschild— the magic name for all Jews. The wine was blessed. The bread was cut. We sat down to eat.

My sisters, who did all the serving, bustled shyly around the visitor from another planet. For a Rothschild, he seemed rather hungry. He wolfed the food down, praising it heartily, accepting a second and third helping with cheerful grace, talking with an important air, as he ate, of the army, his service in the trenches in France, and his own family. It seemed almost incredible that a Rothschild should be so like the rest of us. We listened eagerly for something that would be different, something rich, something almost royal, as befitted a Rothschild. It never seemed to occur to any of us, remote from the world in our little northern town, that perhaps there were Rothschilds who weren’t Rothschilds. No one asked questions too pointedly. We listened openmouthed.

He had now settled back, with the meal over, loosening his belt for comfort, and still talking while the dishes were cleared away. At that moment there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” my father called. The door opened, and Dolly Woolf stood there, plump, pretty, and simpering. It was clear that she had heard about the Rothschild, and had come to see for herself.

Dannie and Simon both got up. Dolly smiled at them, with a sly look at the same time toward the soldier.

“Hallo, Dolly,” my mother said. “Would you like some tea and cake?”

“Oh, let me help with the clearing up,” Dolly said, following my sisters into the kitchen. My eyes darted around—watching my brothers, watching Dolly, watching the lieutenant. All these grownups—they gave each other strange looks. Someone would ask an ordinary question and get a short, angry reply for no reason that I could understand.

My younger sister was being pushed off to bed. I pleaded for and won a respite. My father had taken out a Bible to run through the chapters for the next day’s reading in synagogue. I sat near him, watching.

Dolly was now sitting next to the Rothschild, sipping her tea, flickering her eyelids. Dannie got up abruptly and went out, slamming the door. Simon had picked up a book and was reading.

Lieutenant Rothschild looked at his watch and rose. “I must get back to camp,” he said. “Very strict in the army, you know. Even officers have to be in on time.” He stood, adjusting his belts. Somehow he had become less heroic during the evening.

“I must go as well,” Dolly said gaily. “Mother said I mustn’t be late.” She turned to the lieutenant. “If you’re going toward Hartley Moor, you pass our house.”

“Then I’ll accompany you,” the Rothschild said, smiling.

He shook hands with us all and thanked my mother and father. The door closed behind him and Dolly, and a peace came over the room again. It had been strange. Shabbes had been disturbed, somehow. I was glad he had gone.

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Saturday morning was normally a heavenly time. There was an early cup of tea and a piece of shabbes cake available in the kitchen, and none of the rush of weekdays, with everybody in each other’s way. On shabbes we could sleep late. Still better, we could take our tea upstairs and read in bed.

But this morning, though it was shabbes and a bright summer’s day, there were clouds of anger in the house. I was woken by the sound of my brothers quarreling in the room they shared next to mine, and then, above their voices, I heard my father shouting at them. Perhaps it was late and they were not ready for the early morning service that I was allowed to miss. I heard Mother’s voice asking Father not to get angry; he replied roughly. What had gone wrong? Was it Lieutenant Rothschild? Dolly? I snuggled back into the warm downy bed, hoping to stay safe from the noise.

In the synagogue itself, later, things became normal again. There was excited talk among the men at news in the paper of the capture of some town in Palestine. And inevitably there was the other side of the war, too, when Mr. Isaacs got up to say kaddish— the memorial prayer—for his son. The news had come that week that Monty Isaacs, nineteen years old, had been killed in France. As Mr. Isaacs said the kaddish, slowly, the tears streaming down his face, I heard weeping from the women in the gallery. These scenes had become usual to me. Every day there were rows of small photographs in the papers, pictures of young men—all looking alike—Killed in Action. . . .

There was a Bar Mitzvah that morning in shul, and a small reception afterward in the vestry. Dannie was not there, which surprised me. We all loved these parties—whiskey and herring for the men, wine and sweet things for the women and children. But nothing was said, and we strolled home quietly. Mother always looked different in her shabbes clothes. Father walked beside her like a prince—calm and dignified, neatly dressed, unruffled, majestic in his precisely trimmed beard.

My two older sisters stood at the door of our house, waiting, with an expression of anguish.

“It’s Dannie,” the older one said.

A cloud of anger came over my father’s face. “What is it?” he said roughly. Mother, suddenly frightened, pushed past Father and rushed into the house. Dannie, the wild one, was her favorite.

Inside the front door, it was clear where to go. The door on the right to the front parlor was open. Inside this room, with its upright piano and upholstered furniture, reserved for special visitors, was a heavy sideboard with a cupboard which Father always kept locked. The lock had been broken open and on top of the sideboard was a letter from Dannie.

A terrible thought swamped my mind. Dannie had written the letter on shabbes! He had forced the lock on shabbes!

Mother was wringing her hands. Father had picked up the paper and was reading it to her:

I am going to Edinburgh to enlist in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders as a drummer-boy. I was afraid to tell you. I have had to borrow the railway fare from the cupboard but I will send it back. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.

My father stood motionless, holding the paper. I had burst into tears, with my mother. To have broken open the cupboard—and on shabbes. It was as if the earth had opened up.

Father stood there, and then, after a long silence, said gently to Mother: “Come, Rachel, the children are hungry.” We went into the dining room and sat down, with Dannie’s place empty. My father had washed his hands in the ritual way for the meal, and now said grace, as he cut the bread: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who bringest forth bread from the earth. . . .”

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With dinner over, I went off on my own, down to the beach to see if Sammy Woolf or Willie Fisher or anyone I knew might be there. I was particularly hoping that Sammy hadn’t gone to the pictures. He had told me that morning in synagogue that Dolly had come home very late after seeing the Rothschild at our house, and had got into trouble. Her mother had called her some name which neither of us understood. We wanted to look it up, if we only knew where. But now it seemed unimportant. I wanted to tell him about Dannie—not about the cupboard, but that he had gone off to enlist, and in a Highland Regiment, with a kilt. But Sammy wasn’t there. It felt lonely. People were sitting on the hot sand, soldiers and sailors among them, with uniforms unbuttoned in the heat. Some people were swimming. But no one could swim as far out as Dannie. Thinking of him, I turned back from the beach.

It was too early for the afternoon service, and as I came near our house, I went on past it toward the market place, to wander among the stalls. It was always cheerful there on a Saturday afternoon, and my troubles soon faded. I had just settled down to watch a Punch and Judy show when I saw Mrs. Fisher, Willie’s mother, in front of me, heavily laden with shopping bags. She had stopped for a minute to rest and mop her brow, and gave me a smile as she recognized me. In turning to smile, she dropped two of the bags, which burst, scattering fruit in all directions. I bent down instinctively to help her, and we laughed at the problem she now faced, her arms full of broken bags. “Let me help you,” I said to her. “Oh, thank you,” she said, putting the broken bags into my arms. I held out my arms for more. “I can take the bread, too,” I said proudly. “You’re a good boy,” she said, handing it to me. “I’m really exhausted. I’d never have got home without help.”

We struggled along together, up the hill away from the market. My arms began to ache, but I was very happy to help her. When we got to her shop, she took her parcels from me and gave me an apple for myself. I took it and strolled away cheerfully, thinking that I was now a little late for minhah— the afternoon service; and at that moment, as I thought of minhah, the enormity of what I had been doing swept over me. Without realizing it, I had broken the Sabbath! I had carried things in the street, which was absolutely forbidden. I was as bad as Dannie. A horrible sinking fear came into my heart. I looked at the apple in my hand and threw it away fiercely.

All through the service, and at home later, I went over it all to myself. Something bad was happening to us—to all our family. Dannie had gone, my hero. Simon would go too, with his quiet, clever ways. Were we all sinful, rebelling against Father, like the children of Israel? I muttered my night prayer fervently as I fell asleep.

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But in sleep, the fear returned. I was tossing, struggling to get free of something holding me back, when I awoke to find myself being carried into the cellar of our house, held in a blanket in my father’s arms, like Isaac being taken by his father Abraham to the sacrifice. I knew as I opened my eyes that a great bang had awakened me, and then I heard another—a gun, a whole range of guns—booming away overhead.

“Shush,” my father said, “don’t be afraid.”

I struggled out of the blanket and looked around in the dim light. They were all there, Mother and the baby, and the girls, all in night clothes, shivering in blankets.

I knew, even before my father spoke, that the worst had happened. “It’s a Zeppelin,” he said. “Sleep now. Don’t worry; it will be all right.”

“No!” I cried, “No! No!” I managed to break away and run up the stairs. It was all my fault. I had sinned. I couldn’t stay hiding in the cellar, waiting to be crushed.

“Come back,” my mother cried. “The Zeppelin!” Father was running after me, but I had got upstairs and run to the window in the large room which looked out toward the sea. The curtains were open, and I stood there breathless at what the heavens showed. The sky was criss-crossed in a dazzling pattern of searchlights, switching swiftly up and down and across. And suddenly, caught in a criss-cross of light, we saw it—the great silver shape sailing straight at us.

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The guns barked out in a cannonade. The earth shook, but the Zeppelin came on, unharmed, untouched.

The searchlights had lost her. They flickered around, the guns were silent.

And now, first quietly, and then more loudly, we heard the motors. We could hear the Zeppelin. It was over our heads.

The guns spoke again, and the searchlights roamed the sky; but there was nothing to see now in the flickering light, only the sound of the engines coming near in a roar. The guns boomed again. At any moment now, the bombs. . . .

In the sky above our heads, we saw a red flash, and then in the same second a sudden burst of flame. It grew as we watched into a roaring mass of flame—the whole sky was on fire. The Zeppelin!

I felt a wild exultation. My father ran down into the cellar to fetch the others, and I dashed to the front door. As I opened it, the noise grew suddenly louder—the crackle of flames and the cries of the people in the street.

“It’s going down on the Town Hall!”

“No, on the cliffs!”

It was, in fact, tearing its way into some fields near the beach, where the gypsy caravans often stood. The trees around had begun to burn, and the whole sky before us was lit up in flame. The family had all come upstairs from the cellar to see. They were laughing and shouting outside with everybody else. My father stood immobile, slightly apart, his head lifted, his beard glistening in the fiery light.

People were rushing through the streets toward the Zeppelin. I ran upstairs for my trousers, and dashed out too. The Zeppelin was down: there was nothing more to be afraid of. All kinds of thoughts burst into my head, to pop like balloons. I was moving into a higher class at school and would lose Miss Freeman. I might have to find a new friend, with Willie Fisher left behind. It didn’t matter. The Kaiser was finished. Dannie would come back, in his kilt. Father would be smiling. We would all be together again.